10 March 2016

Urban Jonsson: a towering figure in the world of nutrition and human rights

The late, great Urban Jonsson
We learnt yesterday that one of the giants of nutrition and of human rights, Urban Jonsson, had passed away.

If ever there was a better proponent of Neil Young's famous line "it's better to burn out than to fade away" I can't think of one.  Urban went down swinging, for nutrition, for rights, for humanity.

Why was he so great?

Well, for starters, he was a conceptual thinker.  Want to know where the UNICEF framework came from?  What the Lancet framework was inspired by?  Answer: Urban Jonsson.

He understood the importance of politics in nutrition. He had a stint as a politician in Sweden.  He was a master communicator and he understood how to do deals for nutrition.

He was practical yet idealistic.  He popularised the triple A cycle within UNICEF (assessment, analysis, action) and he popularised (with others) the importance of rights in nutrition and in development more broadly--he was eloquent in explaining how people had to have support to claim rights and how duty bearers often needed support to deliver on those claims.

He was fearless.  He basically said whatever he thought, no matter the consequences for himself (and sometimes for others).  This got him into trouble quite often.  Sometimes it made him unnecessarily controversial.  And while he often sucked the oxygen from a room, he usually substituted that with boundless energy and passion.  Read about him here, in his own words.

The first time I ever spoke to him was on the phone in 1994 while I was working in South Africa.  He called me up out of the blue to "summon" me to give a presentation at the UNSCN meetings that year.  It took me about 20 minutes to convince him I would not attend -- because I would be on honeymoon!

He was that kind of a person--he wouldn't take no for an answer when it came to nutrition.  We need more people like that.

I will miss him, as will thousands of others.


Lina Mahy said...

I had the honor, as a fresh 25-year old starting as Nutrition Officer with UNICEF, to meet Urban Jonsson in Nepal, where he organized (and I attended) the first ever Triple-A Nutrition workshop (Assessment -> Analysis -> Action) in Kathmandu. During this workshop the conceptual framework of malnutrition was presented and discussed. I listened and learned.

A few months later, I had to organize a Triple-A workshop in my duty station (in Bauchi, Nigeria) and Urban was a resource person for that workshop. This was in December 1992.

What an impressive personality Urban was! What a knowledge, infectious energy and commitment!

What a loss for the nutrition community....

Richard Morgan said...

Dear Laurence,
Thank you so much for posting this tribute to dear Urban. We grieve together with Olivia. I was one of so many who learned at Urban's feet (not that he would appreciate the phrase!). He changed my thinking about nutrition completely, at an intense workshop in Zanzibar in 1991. I have not changed it much since, because Urban was right.
After that, he taught me to think about development in the context of Human Rights. That's a process which began very largely with him, and which never ends.
To this day, when people ask (as they sometimes do, even now), how and why are Human Rights relevant to development, and to development professional, I direct them to Urban's book, The Human Rights Approach to Development Programming. It builds so beautifully upon the nutrition conceptual framework and the triple-A approach. It's here https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Human_Rights_Approach_to_Development_Pro.html?id=I-bwfNDp1YAC&redir_esc=y
And it probably needs a huge reprint, in his memory.
Thank you so much again.

Stuart Gillespie, IFPRI said...

Urban blazed a trail across the nutrition community – in many ways shaping its discourse and action – for decades. He was the ultimate nutrition champion -- a master orator and the leading advocate for nutrition and human rights. I was lucky to have had the opportunity to work closely with Urban in the 1990s, especially during his time in Kathmandu. His energy levels were off the scale – I remember his detailed “to do lists”, kicking off at 5am ……and the fact he would actually achieve 90% of what he set himself! Urban sharpened our thinking and action in nutrition, and made us step up our game. He will be hugely missed….